Angkor Thom
Angkor Thom was the fortified inner royal city built by Jayavarman VII (1181 - 1220?), Buddhist king of the Khmer Empire, at the end of the 12th Century, after Angkor had been conquered and destroyed by the Chams.
It lies on the right bank of the river Siem Reap, a tributary of Tonle Sap, about a quarter of a mile from the river.
The royal city was built as a quadrangle, nearly 2 miles in each direction, surrounded by a 1000 meter moat and an 8 metres high wall. According to Aymonier it was begun about 860 and finished towards 900. Within the enclosure, which is entered by five monumental gates, are the remains of palaces and temples, overgrown by the forest. The chief of these are:
- The vestiges of the royal palace, which had been built during the reign of Suryavarman I 150 years earlier. It stood within an enclosure containing also the pyramidal religious structure known as the Phimeanakas. To the east of this enclosure there extends a terrace decorated with magnificent reliefs.
- The temple of Bayon, Jayavarman VII's state temple. It is a square enclosure formed by galleries with colonnades, within which is another and more elaborate system of galleries, rectangular in arrangement and enclosing a cruciform structure, at the centre of which rises a huge tower with a circular base. Fifty towers, decorated with quadruple faces of the Buddha, are built at intervals upon the galleries, and the inside walls are covered with reliefs of kings and town life, the whole temple ranking as perhaps the most remarkable of the Khmer remains.
Its buildings also included the Heavenly Palace where the king spent the first part of each night engaged in sexual intercourse with the Sun Queen, according to legend.
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External link
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
